Tuesday, February 15, 2011

Criminals? I think not...

Well, I (Jessi) have to go get refingerprinted today at the police station because the FBI rejected the first set. Apparently my hands are dry, and I need to use lots of lotion on my fingertips before I go...at least that's what the nice lady at the Indiana State Police Headquarters told me. Other than the obvious frustration of having to have black ink on every finger and looking like a criminal, it's frustrating because they will now send my prints to West Virginia and it will take longer than the first time to get it back...

I'm going to attempt to explain a little bit about the process for adopting international so you understand what the fingerprint hold up is really holding up!! :)

*So the first thing that a couple must do for an adoption is complete a homestudy. This is when a social worker, or homestudy agency, meets with you at least 3 times to find out basically if you are fit parents. It also consist of classes that are required for you to be able to adopt. This is also when you get fingerprinted to make sure you aren't a criminal. The homestudy agency must have a state and FBI clearance...which is the ONLY thing our homestudy is missing.

*After the homestudy is complete you can do the following things all simultaneously (if you have the money too):
* Begin working on your Dossier - a bunch of documents that you send to the foreign government
* Apply for Grants (because it's crazy expensive)
* Apply to the US Government to be approved to bring an orphan to the US - this involves driving to Indy on specified day to be electronically fingerprinted, among other things...

* Once the Dossier has been completed and sent to Russia (in our case) we will be "matched" with our daughter, and will be able to travel to Russia to complete our first visit.

* Travel to Russia #1: We'll meet with the orphanage staff about Sveta's health records, visit with her, and work on a few other documents, etc.

* Second set of Dossier documents are sent to Russia once we return and we wait for a court date.

*Once we get a court date, we travel then to pick up our daughter, go to court, and finalize paperwork for Russia & the US.

Hope this helps. Feel free to ask any questions you have of Barry or I...we are excited and really love talking to people as they get excited too! It's so incredible to see how much people love and care for us...and our daughter that they have yet to meet.

We're still being blown away by the generousity of our family and friends!! We're this far now...